Hermione The Rockstar
by Lindsey Ribbons
Summary: Hermione loses her job at the Ministry so she forms a rock band. Harry and Ron are labelled as traitors so they take on odd jobs on the opposite end of the law to make their living.


CHAPTER 1

I'm Harry Potter - yeah, that one - and before I tell you about Hermione's bizarre career in the performing arts, I'd like to correct a few things you may have read about me in print.

My parents were killed just as the stories go and I really did stop Voldemort when I was a toddler - all that is true.

It's also true I lived with my aunt and uncle, but they took me in lovingly and raised me like their own son, truthfully informing me about my wizard heritage once I was old enough to understand. We see each other for Christmas, we exchange birthday cards, and Dudley and I go out for a pint at least once a month.

Snape was a tortured soul who hid his paternal affection for me beneath a mask of scowling hatred, but no one ever recognizes him for his sophisticated blend of sculpture and charms or for his water colors. I have one of his water colors hanging in my living room. He wasn't always nasty to me, either. After summer exams, he always invited me to his office for a butterbeer so he could tell me about my parents. The stories about Dad bullying him are taken out of context. Snape admitted once that while Dad could be an asshole, Snape did a lot to deserve it, having once transfigured Dad's armpit hair into scorpions. You may also be interested to know that The Half Blood Prince was Snape's rap persona and that he once had a hit single on both muggle and wizard hip hop charts.

Many of the stories written about me and my friends Ron and Hermione were recounted to my biographers by third parties and for instance, fail to mention that while Hermione was always studying, it was Ron who always had to help her with her homework. Ron, accurately portrayed as a slacker, always got better grades than Hermione and she hated him for it.

Molly Weasley did sort of take me in as her own son, but she did that to absolutely everyone her kids ever brought home from school. I'm presently aware of thirty people for whom she has knitted jumpers at Christmas, and I'm sure there are more. Lovely lady, by the way. The stories about her delicious roast beef? All true.

My quidditch stories? Under told. You should hear about this one time in third year during an exhibition match against Hufflepuff where I tricked a bludger into knocking the snitch into my hand. It was a lot harder than it sounds and it took two backflips off my broom to make it happen. I've got lots of great quidditch stories.

So how's a celebrity to make a living, then? I'm famous for killing a man twice, ending a war, and that's it. How far does that take you in the real world? I'm a pretty face, but that's not enough once puberty's set in and you're not so cute anymore. After the war, I spent two seasons as seeker for The Edinburgh Mermaids, including the year they made it to finals (the only year, by the way), but one really bad bludger to the knee and my quidditch career was finished. Fortunately, Ron had become employed as an auror, he put in a good word for me, and I eventually became an auror as well. We fought crime, we did our time, and our hard work paid off so that we held respectable titles in our department as well as impressively high security clearance in The Ministry of Magic. One day though, it all changed.

Ron and I specialized in hunting dark wizards - bringing many to justice for their crimes against their fellow men. During these times of chaos, it was hard work like mine and Ron's that really stabilized the peace while communities all over the UK rebuilt.

Following the conviction of Elspeth Broodlewog, the notorious muggle killer of Essex, she let slip that there was a deatheather working high up in the Ministry. I'll spare the details of the tedious paperwork that followed, but Ron and I concluded that the deatheather in question was in fact, Stormsworth Blackhart, the present-day minister of magic. What we did next, we would never have done unless we were 120% certain that he was the villain we suspected, and he was.

Should Blackhart have gone unstopped, he would have raised an army akin to Voldemorts only this time, with the power of democracy unwittingly at his side.

Blackhart had conveniently repealed all laws that made it possible for us to arrest him legally, so Ron and I had to get clever. Our original plan was to place him under the imperius curse and have him stage a press conference where he would "confess" to his crimes as a deatheater and resign as minister. A lot of things went wrong.

First, Blackhart confined himself to areas of the Ministry for which Ron and I didn't have high enough clearance. We would have to polyjuice our way into his security personnel. We dedicated weeks to learning the idiosyncrasies of Blackhart's security and weeks more learning to speak like the two bodyguards we had chosen to impersonate - their wand technique, their grades in school, their favourite beer, their favourite quidditch teams, their mothers maiden names. We had purposely selected the two weakest-minded guards so that we could easily manipulate them into spending the next year in Germany, watching birds. To excuse our own absences, Ron and I signed up for special training courses in Canada and thus, our actual undercover work began.

After three months of talking, eating, drinking, walking, smoking, belching, residing, and even using the same wands as our subjects, our moment of opportunity arrived as we found the three of us - Ron, me, and Blackhart - in an otherwise empty mens washroom. We immediately accessed our real wands, locked the doors and shouted "imperio!" Blackhart's will was stronger than we'd counted on, though. He refused to fall under influence and the curse failed. Naturally, Blackhart then tried to kill the both of us, throwing kill curses at us with amazing stealth. I don't know if it was me or Ron, but one of our stupefaction curses sent Blackhart head first into a mirror. The mirror promptly shattered, Blackhart became unconscious and bled to death from his injuries.

We were just about to leave when we heard someone yell from the other side of the door: "open the doors, throw us your wands, and come out with your hands on your heads! Or you can starve to death. We don't care which you choose!"

We were so deep into the Ministry that Ron nor I could apparate.

"The polyjuice is fading," said Ron. "Is there a point in taking another dose?"

"No," I said. "They'll arrest us before they question us, and when the potion wears off again, we'll be charged for illegally impersonating Ministry staff on top of murdering the minister of magic."

We flushed all the polyjuice we had on our persons and transfigured our robes to better fit our figures.

"We've saved England again," said Ron.

"Nothing to do now but explain ourselves at the trial," said I.

We surrendered and were sadistically beaten before we were arrested. In less than an hour, we were headline news all over the world: "Harry Potter and the murder of the minister."

At the trial, held two weeks later, we spent hours displaying documents, articles, and hard evidence that proved beyond any possible doubt that we had actually prevented the slaughter of millions. We had expert testimony from respectable wizards of all relevant fields of magic. We even had testimony from dark wizards whom we had personally arrested who had known Blackhart: "even though I hate Potter and Weasley and would gladly kill them with their own wands, I can't argue that they did the world a great service by stopping Blackhart."

The testimony against us was quite disturbing: "who are you to decide which millions get to live and which one gets to die?" "What it boils down to is that Blackhart got greedy. So if I get a little greedy at supper cause I'm really hungry, are you going to kill me too?"

Ron and I were found guilty of murder in the first degree and of treason. Our assets were immediate seized by the Ministry, meaning I was unable to support my family. Ginny, pregnant with our third child, had had to retire from quidditch, and now she had to sell our house to make ends meet for her and the children.

We each got one owl before going to Azkaban. Ron set his owl free as a bold political statement. I called for Dudley, who visited promptly.

"I'm not a criminal lawyer," said Dudley sitting opposite me in a heavily guarded room. He was the spitting image of Uncle Vernon and not nearly as fat as you may have read. "What exactly do you think I do?"

"I know what you do," I replied. "You oversee the legal aspects of real estate transactions between wizards and muggles and I hear your the best in your field, but you're the only one I can trust right now. You've got to get us out of here. Hermione will help you. I'm counting on you, Big D."

Dudley and Hermione refused payment and spent a year buried in tedious paperwork I needn't bore you with. Their efforts as well dozens of wizard university student-led campaigns and protests earned us a second trial, where we were found innocent of treason and guilty of manslaughter instead of murder. We were sentenced to the one year in Azkaban that we had just served.

I was a free man again, but my name was tarnished and relegated to tabloids that talked about my weight gain and delusions of grandeur. I was used to bad publicity as an adolescent, but try getting a job under these circumstances as an adult. Blackhart had been voted in by the wizard voting majority and had had a high approval rating, meaning that a lot of citizens were outraged to learn I'd been declared innocent of treason: "he's a celebrity, so of course he gets to murder whoever he wants!" Most of these people hadn't read a scrap of news that thoroughly detailed the evidence against Blackhart, of course, and the ones who had read it shrugged it off as media hogwash that had been propagated to justify my release.

The jobs I wanted were offered by people who thought I was a traitor and the people who thought I was a hero could only offer low paying work which was hardly substantial to feed a growing family. Ron's luck was no better than mine. Dudley ended up losing all his clients and had to find work in a muggle office. Hermione was unfairly sacked from her job at the Ministry after failing to sign a form in triplicate so she got a job in the Three Broomsticks kitchen.

So where are you now then? You've spent your life fighting the good fight for the good guys and where has it left you? They hate you for saving their lives and those who don't hate you for saving their lives hate you for going to Azkaban because nevermind that you were innocent - you still went there and that's enough to make them distrust you. Your team doesn't want you anymore so what do you do?

You join the other team.

Following my release, I indulged in time with Ginny, the boys, and my beautiful newborn daughter. We had no money. The contents of my vault had been seized by the Ministry following my initial incarceration and despite the retrial where I was found innocent, the paperwork for getting back my family's hard-earned fortune was naturally sluggish. More then likely, the Ministry had spent it all and was hoping I'd get tired of trying to reclaim it.

To make ends meet, I competed in underground wizard dueling. The matches were illegal, of course, but really, it was just gamblers and fighters who wanted to congregate and be themselves. The only people they ever really harmed were each other, they took care of their own business and stayed out of the Ministry's way. Even as aurors, Ron and I ignored had these sorts of affairs, reserving our talents to help the innocent and defenseless.

At the end of two months, my record was thirty wins and no losses. I wasn't rich, but we were living in a comfortable apartment in Hogsmeade's baking district. Ginny had some new clothes, James and Albus looked respectable and were able to compete in local quidditch and local muggle football, and Lily was a well fed little princess.

So one thursday night, my fight is cancelled because my opponent has mysteriously died, so I meet with some the old griffins, Ron, George, Seamus, Dean and Neville, for a long overdue drink at The Three Broomsticks while we watch quidditch on wizard tv.

"While you were gone," says Seamus, "the Mermaids traded three players for get this - Oliver Wood! So Wood sets a NQL record of seven shutouts in a row, right, and the Mermaids still can't find the snitch!"

"No snatch without snitch in quidditch," says Dean.

We chit chat for a few hours, and I'm eventually left in a near empty bar with Ron.

"So Harry," says Ron, making sure no one is listening. "How would like you to work for George at the Triple W?"

"Selling things? My face has lost a lot of it's sales appeal," I reply.

"No, it's a warehouse job. Moving boxes and all that. It pays the same as when you win a duel."

"What would you know about that?" I ask.

Ron waves his wand, and accurately displays the number of galleons I won in last nights match against Horace "The Hexmaster" Wigglestein.

"Ginny knows you're dueling," says Ron, "and I know it's none of my business, but she doesn't like it, all right? Wouldn't you rather have a steady job where you don't have your face hexed in every night? A pension plan? James will be starting Hogwarts soon. Do you really want to see him off at the train station with two black eyes and slugs in your nose? Think about it, all right?"

So I take the job and it's about as interesting as you would think it is until one day when George comes to me and Ron just before work's finished.

"I need you two to work late," says George.

"What's the shipment?" asks Ron.

"It's leaving Gringotts sometime after midnight and scheduled to arrive at The Extra Lucky Casino an hour later. Intercept it, leave no trace, and bring it here," says George, who promptly fucks off.

"What did he say?" I ask Ron.

So it turns out that George has been hired by Justin Finch-Fletchy, who now runs an insurance agency. The scheme goes like this - we steal the casino's money and give it to George who gives it to Justin. The casino goes to Justin, explains they've been robbed, and Justin gives their money right back to them and says: "this is the third time you've been robbed. If you want to keep us as your insurance provider, we have to increase your fees because you're a risk." The casino knows they can't go anywhere else because they're too much of a liability, so they have no choice but to pay extra, and that's how Justin can afford to live in castle on his own private island somewhere north of Scotland.

"Well done, Harry," says George, who gives me my cut of the robbery, which is twice my monthly salary. "Thanks again for working overtime. Will you regularly be available for overtime work?"

I've gone from top auror in the UK to a warehouse worker at a jokeshop. My work is pretty routine - George does business in North America and always collects hair samples from muggles who have no reason whatsoever to be implicated in wizard England. Ron and I assume these muggle identities (different ones each time), we rob who it is we're supposed to rob, steal what it is we're supposed to steal, and leave no trace.

If found guilty for my crimes, I would get ten years, out in six.

I felt no guilt for my actions and let me tell you why: as an ex-auror, I knew all the dirty secrets of UK's wizarding community that had remained hidden and unpunished due to Ministry cowardice and legal technicalities. The Extra Lucky Casino for instance, advertised in children's schools. We were stealing from criminals and boosting the economy as the criminals had to spend money in law-respecting establishments to regain their losses. For whatever it's worth, George never once offered me work that hurt innocent people.

Ginny was no fool, though.

"You worked overtime again?" she asked when I came home at five in the morning.

"Yeah," I said. "It was a pretty big shipment."

"I don't want you to accept anymore overtime, do you hear me?" she said. "Too much overtime means you're never home, which is just like when you were in Azkaban, which is where the criminals go. The next time George offers you overtime, you turn him down or I'm leaving you and taking the kids with me and you'll never see us again. Have I made myself perfectly clear?"

"Ginny, I've been working overtime because we need the money. I love you and the kids so much and I just want you to have all the things you want."

"When you were in jail for killing Blackhart, I was proud of you. I'm not proud of your overtime, even if all the work is only between industry associates. I don't care about the money, Harry. Promise me you won't work a single extra minute of overtime."

"Ok, Ginny," I said. "I promise. I'll tell George tonight."

And I did.

"George," I said, "I can't do overtime anymore. It's affecting my family life."

"That's a shame, Harry," said George. "You're a hard worker, but family's more important, and I understand. Let me know if you ever available again."


End file.
